CDT ChinaCast: Interview with IRN’s Peter Bosshard

This week CDT ChinaCast focuses on China’s role in Africa by talking with Peter Bosshard, the policy director of International Rivers Network(IRN), a California-based environmental NGO. Bosshard and IRN have worked with global groups and communities to stop large and destructive dam projects.

They were quite successful until facing a real challenge from China, which has started building large dams in place like Africa.

Bosshard says, when China builds the dams, it is so destructive that no-one else wants to work with them. He gives an example of the Merowe dam in Sudan. This project forced over 50,000 farmers to move from the Nile valley where they have lived for generations into desert where nothing can grow. Bosshard raises the questions for China: Who will benefit, and who will pay the price for the dam projects China has built in Africa?

Listen to the interview here.
CDT ChinaCast is a podcast series of short and informal conversations with journalists, business people, artists and others doing interesting work in or about China.